The Nuclear Option
by karikara
Summary: Alternate Universe (GaaHina) - Most people had enough natural shame around what he did that the words could barely pass their lips. Gaara imagined that if you followed upstream the series of events that ended with him looming over someone like the ink-black exclamation mark at the end of a sentence, you'd most often find the querulous four words, "Take care of it."
1. Chapter 1

Had she ever finished one in her life? Hinata clutched the hard candy in her hand, satisfied with the crisp resistance of the cellophane wrapper against her fingers. The plastic grew tacky as she held it in her sweating hand. She tore the wrapper open, tearing the serrated edge and put it in her mouth.

The peppery taste made her eyes smart almost instantaneously, just the same as it did when she was a kid. She remembered Kiba asking her why she always ate them if they made her cry. Hinata would just shrug and say she liked it.

She cupped the fireball in her tongue while she opened her mouth slightly to breath around it to lessen the burn as she clicked on the icon to access her VPN. Over the years she had developed her own ways to conceal her activities. Some might say it was because of what her father was. Like father like daughter, huh?

Hinata knew it was because not what but who her father was. The oxygenless world she grew up in created an inbuilt desire for concealment. Because to be unseen, to go unnoticed by the clan was the closest you got to being free. That's why she created her second life. Ironically, that was how she found out too much about the real one. She went to the draft folder of her inbox - one of the accounts they didn't know about - couldn't know about, she prayed.

She read the message, and read it again while she played around with the hard ball of heat in her mouth shifting it from one cheek to the other, exploring with her tongue the strange little sores on the inside of her cheek that it left in its place as she did. She couldn't hang on to the message forever. Send or delete. Go or suffocate. Those were her options. She checked the addressee info again. Kiba Inuzuka.

It would figure that she somehow would befriend the kid of a cop as a child, a boy who grew up to continue the family tradition by becoming an investigator for the PD. Family tradition, her family had its own traditions...They were ones Hinata would not be keeping up, not after she sent this message. With the send button came a permanent severance, even if it would be awhile until they figured it all out. She sighed. It wasn't going to get easier. Why not get it over with? She had work to do.

She hit the quick keys on her keyboard to send and sat there in the dark of the early morning, heart hammering in her chest, wondering what the hell would happen next. What she would do next, and just what exactly her father was capable of if he...when he found out.

The candy, stripped of its spicy outer covering was still a hard nub on her tongue. Had she ever finished even one atomic fireball? Had she ever sat patiently and sucked it down to a sliver that dissolved away in her mouth? If not, today would not be the day. She maneuvered the candy between her teeth as she squinted at the glow of her laptop in the unlit room. There was no turning back now. CRUNCH.


	2. Chapter 2

Meeting the client was not something you did. Not in his rarefied profession. His assignments were typically relayed by a middleman, or woman, in the case of his sister. And that was that.

It was cleaner that way, certainly safer for Gaara's clients, whose identity he really didn't need to know. After all, who wants their face seen by a hitman, let alone one with his reputation? Who wanted to say point blank to a contract killer what they wanted him to do, and who they wanted him to do it to.

Most people had enough natural shame around what he did that the words could barely pass their lips. Gaara imagined that if you followed upstream the series of events that ended with him looming over someone like the ink-black exclamation mark at the end of a sentence, you'd most often find the querulous four words, "Take care of it."

Take care of it - what a cute euphemism. Almost as bad as his brother's own descriptor for what Gaara was. "A terminal solutions provider," Kankuro liked to joke. You could call it whatever you like. Gaara didn't really care. He knew what he was and who he was. He was Saito Gaara, and he murdered people for money. A lot of money. Because he was good at it.

As someone with his skills and rates, he tended to be called into very difficult situations - ones where the stakes were high for buyers, and the difficulty of the hit was even higher. Namely, people who had protection. Usually lots of it.

They were typically little tyrants. Old men, once hard and mean, now the cruel corpulent middle-managers or heads of different gangs, calling shots with the lives of those underneath them. People like Gaara's late father. And that suited Gaara just fine.

Eliminate powerful and troublesome people. That's what Gaara did. At least that's typically what he did. But Temari had already warned him that today's assignment was something different. A sort of longer-term contract, with one of his biggest contractors.

It would all become clear when he arrived, she explained. Gaara should say, "Yes," she explained. Whatever it was they asked him. "Let's not lose this account," she said. "And, whatever you do, let's definitely not piss these people off. I'll see you there."


End file.
